Ad: Obama and abortion

posted at 2:10 pm on October 13, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

The Family Research Council takes aim at the Matthew 25 PAC that has tried to sell Barack Obama to evangelicals. In their new advertisement, the FRC notes that Obama himself has described his enactment of the Freedom of Choice Act as his “top priority” as President:

The FOCA would undo many of the restrictions on abortion at the federal and state level. That’s not an analysis from anti-abortion advocates, but from pro-abortion activists like NOW and Planned Parenthood. It’s a radical departure from the current, more moderate status quo and a large leap to the left on abortion:

“The legislation (FOCA) would invalidate existing and future laws that interfere with or discriminate against the exercise of the rights protected. It also would provide an individual aggrieved by a violation of the act a private right of civil action in order to obtain appropriate relief.” – Planned Parenthood web site.[2]

” Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, joined pro-choice members of Congress and activists at a Capitol Hill press conference to introduce legislation that would codify Roe v. Wade into law and guarantee a woman’s right to choose in all 50 states. ” – NARAL

Pro-Choice America (formerly called the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) press release, April 19, 2007 .[3]

It’s quite telling that Obama declared this his top priority — not terrorism, not national security, not the financial crisis, although I believe this quote came before most people knew we were heading into one. Obama is, simply put, the most radical major-party nominee for President in decades, and perhaps ever, on this issue. Evangelicals who get lulled into thinking of Obama as a moderate because of his mellifluous speaking voice will find themselves in for a rude awakening after January if he wins.

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The answer is above my pay grade, but for purposes of abortion, I think it should be a increasing slope (as the embryo becomes bigger, it becomes more and more a full fledge human being).

Now you’re quoting Obama.

You’re either a joker with bad timing, or a parrot. I’ll let you decide which.

However, I want to touch more thoroughly on your response to me, as I was a bit rushed in my prior post.

Society,

Frankly, society has well enough proved itself to be corrupt. I don’t want some nameless “society” dictating what is human and what isn’t. Saying “society” dictates such things essentially means “whatever is popular is right”… meaning you aren’t willing to take a stand for whatever you might believe in if “society” doesn’t support it.

norms,

What is “normal” is determined by “society”. See above.

science,

Modern “science” is so overrun with Humanist philosophy that it no longer qualifies as a fair arbiter.

However, older science refutes your claim – Mendel and his contemporaries, in their experiments that proved the law of “like begets like”. It’s either Human or Not Human – it cannot be anything in-between – and since it was produced from two Humans that by automatic default makes it Human. And the extermination of an innocent Human life is Murder. End of Line.

morals, religion

Again, see my last post, I call BS on this one. I don’t know any part of religion or morality that declares one person “less human” than another for ANY reason.

Focus on the Family is doing yeoman’s work in getting ultrasound technology into abortion-alternative clinics. Clinics that have this ability to show parents the baby moving around inside have a much greater success rate in convincing parents not to kill their babies.

What the dickens is the difference between a human being and a human life? – Trafalgar on October 13, 2008 at 5:16 PM

Truth be told, Lord Nelson, although all human beings are comprised of living human cells, not all living human cells are human beings. A living sperm cell is just that: a sperm cell. Ditto for an oocyte.

But when they join, the resulting zygote has only one natural destiny: to grow into an adult human being capable of reproduction. Human life does not “begin” at conception (indeed, living cells can come only from other living cells), rather, every individual human organism (i.e., every human being) begins his or her individual biological existence as a zygote.

But when they join, the resulting zygote has only one natural destiny: to grow into an adult human being capable of reproduction. Human life does not “begin” at conception (indeed, living cells can come only from other living cells), rather, every individual human organism (i.e., every human being) begins his or her individual biological existence as a zygote.

This is not more a matter of opinion than 2+2=4.

ManlyRash on October 13, 2008 at 6:28 PM

… So – simply put – once that event has occurred the resulting entity is, for all intents and purposes, a Human. Correct?

A one celled human, just like you used to be, is human. That’s what humans look like at that age. We all know it’s human life because he or she (gender is determined at conception) HAS to be killed in order to have an abortion.

God creates life. We humans don’t. God has a purpose for your life that doesn’t come from your mother and father. God gives your life significance beyond that found by your relationship to your mother and father. The founding fathers had it right in the preamble to the constitution. “Self-evident” was their way of saying “duh”!

The democrats are always the last hurdle in human rights reformation. They were the party of slavery and segregation. Now they’re the party of socialism, sub-prime, and abortion. It’s the democrats that must be convinced about the evils of abortion, not the Republicans.

Thanks for the biology lesson, although I’m unclear about its signifcance to the discussion. My question was what is the difference between human life and human beings? Human cells are human cells, my hair, my skin, my blood, my fingernails…that isn’t the point. The zygote, that amazing unification of the sperm cell and the oocyte, is more than a human cell. It is human life and thus a human being, and I still can’t tell the difference that mycowardice referred to.

The difference is that for me, a human being is one head, two arms, two legs, or something close to that. I see human life as covering a bigger range than human being. In that broader range, I would include early stages of pregancy.

In any event, the naming convention doesn’t make much difference in my reasoning. It’s more conceptually that the foetus gradually reaches a point where I think we switch from abortions being allowed to abortions not being allowed. I understand that this isn’t your view.

Isn’t it funny how being an advocate for the death of the unborn makes you a hero to the left. Odumbo even wants living babies left on tables to die by refusing life-saving medical care. God forbid that anyone suggest that big-eared freak should suffer any retribution for being pro-infanticide. Noooo, can’t have that kind of talk. Words. Just words.